Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read online

  With equal efficiency Mrs. Pollifax handed him the introduction that she had extracted from her congressman; she had not told the congressman her real reason for wishing to interview someone in this building, but she had been compelling. The young man read the note, frowned, glanced at Mrs. Pollifax and frowned again. He seemed particularly disapproving when he looked at her hat, and Mrs. Pollifax guessed that the single fuchsia-pink rose that adorned it must be leaning again like a broken reed.

  “Ah—yes, Mrs. Politflack,” he murmured, obviously baffled by the contents of the introduction—which sounded in awe of Mrs. Pollifax—and by Mrs. Pollifax herself, who did not strike him as awesome at all.

  “Pollifax,” she pointed out gently.

  “Oh—sorry. Now just what is it I can do for you, Mrs. Pollifax? It says here that you are a member of a garden club of your city, and are gathering facts and information—”

  Mrs. Pollifax brushed this aside impatiently. “No, no, not really,” she confided, and glancing around to be sure that the door was closed, she leaned toward him. In a low voice she said, “Actually I’ve come to inquire about your spies.”

  The young man’s jaw dropped. “I beg your pardon?”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “I was wondering if you needed any.”

  He continued staring at her and she wished that he would close his mouth. Apparently he was very obtuse—perhaps he was hard of hearing. Taking care to enunciate clearly, she said in a louder voice, “I would like to apply for work as a spy. That’s why I’m here, you see.”

  The young man closed his mouth. “You can’t possibly—you’re not serious,” he said blankly.

  “Yes, of course,” she told him warmly. “I’ve come to volunteer. I’m quite alone, you see, with no encumbrances or responsibilities. It’s true that my only qualifications are those of character, but when you reach my age character is what you have the most of. I’ve raised two children and run a home, I drive a car and know first aid, I never shrink from the sight of blood and I’m very good in emergencies.”

  Mr. Mason looked oddly stricken. He said in a dazed voice, “But really, you know, spying these days is not bloody at all, Mrs.—Mrs.—”

  “Pollifax,” she reminded him. “I’m terribly relieved to hear that, Mr. Mason. But still I hoped that you might find use for someone—someone expendable, you know—if only to preserve the lives of your younger, better-trained people. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but I am quite prepared to offer you my life or I would not have come.”

  Mr. Mason looked shocked. “But Mrs. Politick,” he protested, “this is simply not the way in which spies are recruited. Not at all. I appreciate the spirit in which you—”

  “Then how?” asked Mrs. Pollifax reasonably. “Where do I present myself?”

  “It’s—well, it’s not a matter of presenting oneself, it’s a matter of your country looking for you.”

  Mrs. Pollifax’s glance was gently reproving. “That’s all very well,” she said, “but how on earth could my country find me in New Brunswick, New Jersey? And have they tried?”

  Mr. Mason looked wan. “No, I don’t suppose—”

  “There, you see?”

  Someone tapped on the door and a young woman appeared, smiled at them both and said, “Mr. Mason, I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s an urgent telephone call for you in your office. It’s Miss Webster.”

  “Miss Webster,” murmured Mr. Mason dazedly, and then, “Good heavens yes, Miss Webster. Where is Miss Webster?” He jumped to his feet and said hastily, “I must excuse myself, I’m sorry, Mrs. Politick.”

  “Pollifax,” she reminded him forgivingly, and leaned back in her chair to wait for his return.

  CHAPTER 2

  Carstairs was lean, tall, with a crew-cut head of gray hair and a tanned, weather-beaten face. He looked an outdoor man although his secretary, Bishop, had no idea how he managed to maintain such a façade. He spent long hours in his office, which was a very special room equipped to bring him into contact with any part of the world in only a few seconds time. He often worked until midnight, and when something unusual was going on he would stay the night. Bishop didn’t envy him his job. He knew that Carstairs was OSS-trained, and that presumably his nerves had long ago been hammered into steel, but it was inhuman the way he kept his calm—Bishop was apt to hit the ceiling if his pencil point broke.

  “Anything from Tirpak?” asked Carstairs right away, as Bishop handed him reports that had been filtering in since midnight.

  “Nothing from him since Nicaragua.”

  “That was two days ago. No word from Costa Rica, either?”

  Bishop shook his head.

  “Damn.” Carstairs leaned back in his chair and thought about it, not liking it very much. “Well, business as usual,” he told Bishop. “It’s time I made arrangements for Tirpak at the Mexico City end. One must be optimistic. I’ll be in Higgins’ office.”

  “Right.”

  “And keep the wires open for any news from Tirpak; he’s overdue and if there’s any word I want to hear immediately.”

  Carstairs opened and closed the door of his soundproof office and joined the life of the humming building. Higgins was in charge of what Carstairs—humorously but never aloud—called “Personnel”: those thousands of paper faces locked up in top-secret steel files and presided over by Higgins of the cherubic face and fantastic memory. “Good morning,” said Carstairs, peering into Higgins’ room.

  “Actually it’s cloudy outside,” Higgins said mildly. “That’s the trouble with this modern architecture. But come in anyway, Bill. Coffee?”

  “You’re saving my life.”

  Higgins looked doubtful. “You’d better taste the swill before you say that, and you’ll have to manage your own carton, I’ve already lost a fingernail prying open the lid of mine. What can I do for you?”

  “I need a tourist.”

  “Well, name your type,” Higgins said dolefully, and lifting his coffee high murmured, “Skoal.”

  “I want,” said Carstairs, “a very particular type of tourist.”

  Higgins put down his coffee and sighed. “I was afraid of that. Tourists I can supply by the droves, but a particular type—well, go ahead, I’m free for half an hour.”

  “He or she will have to come from your inactive list. This tourist must be someone absolutely unknown, Higgins, and that’s vital.”

  “Go on. For what type of job, by the way?”

  Carstairs hesitated. He always hated divulging information, a feeling bred into him during the war years, but Higgins was not likely to meet with torture during the next twenty-four hours. “There’s a package coming into Mexico City. This particular tourist is to be nothing but a tourist for several weeks but on a certain date stop in at a specified place and pick up the package—rendered innocuous for customs, of course—and bring it into the United States.”

  Higgins lifted an eyebrow. “A regular courier won’t do?”

  “Couriers are pretty well known to them,” pointed out Carstairs gently.

  “And to mail it…?”

  “Far, far too risky.”

  Higgins’ gaze grew speculative. “I see. I gather, then, that this package of yours is dynamite—not literally, of course, but figuratively—and that you are therefore reduced to being terribly ingenious and circumspect, but that the job is not dangerous so long as said tourist is utterly unknown to them.”

  “Bless you for saving us both precious minutes,” said Carstairs fondly.

  “Have you considered someone not inactive but absolutely new—a fresh face?”

  Surprised, Carstairs said, “No I hadn’t—that would mean someone totally unseasoned, wouldn’t it?”

  Higgins shrugged. “If there’s no point of contact would it matter?”

  “Mmmm,” murmured Carstairs thoughtfully.

  “One has to sacrifice something for said tourist’s being unknown to anyone. I mean, that’s what you want to avoid, isn’t it—someone me
t in Vienna in 1935 suddenly popping up in Mexico City years later?”

  Carstairs smiled faintly—he doubted if Higgins had even been born in 1935. “Suppose you show me the possibilities,” he suggested. “Very little is demanded of my tourist except accuracy, but he or she must look exactly right.”

  They walked back into the files where photograph after photograph was drawn out, sometimes to be instantly withdrawn with a “Oh dear no, he won’t do, he broke his tibia in the Balkans,” or “Oops, sorry, this lady’s been loaned to the Orient.” When Carstairs left it was with five photographs and a soggy carton of cold coffee.

  “Nothing yet,” said Bishop, glancing up from his typewriter.

  “Damn,” said Carstairs again, checked his watch—it was just half-past nine—and went into the office. Bishop, bless his heart, had left a fresh carton of coffee on his desk and Carstairs peeled it open, brought a cube of sugar from his desk drawer and dropped it into the coffee. He reminded himself that Tirpak was good, one of his best men, but if Tirpak had reported from Nicaragua two days ago he should have been in Costa Rica by now. For eight months Tirpak had been on this job, and from the bits and pieces he’d sent out of South America by wireless and coded mail his eight months had been extremely fruitful. Visually Tirpak was only a photograph in the top-secret files, but Carstairs knew his mind very well—it was that of a computer, a statistician, a jurist. Months ago he had been fed all the tips, stories and rumors that reached the department and from these he was bringing back neat, cold, irrefutable facts on all of Castro’s secret operations in the hemisphere. But alone the facts were nothing; what was most vital of all was the proof that Tirpak was carrying with him out of South America, proof so concrete and detailed that each nation in the Alliance for Progress would know once and for all the face of its enemy and in exactly what form the Trojan horse of communism would appear in its country.

  Coffee in hand Carstairs walked to the ceiling-high map on the wall and stared at it moodily. One might say that Tirpak’s job of work was finished now, and so it was in the literal sense, but actually it was only beginning. This was “phase two,” the most difficult of all, the getting of the proof into the right hands, moving it north, country by country, until it would arrive here on Carstairs’ desk to be forwarded upstairs. That was the difference between this particular job and the others, that it entailed quantities of documents, photographs, dossiers and descriptions of operating methods. It could only be expected that eventually the wrong people would get wind of Tirpak’s job, and it was no coincidence that several of Tirpak’s informants had begun disappearing. The wonder of it was that Tirpak had worked for so long in secrecy. Now time was against him and Carstairs realized that he was worried. He knew the shape that phase two ought to take if everything went off perfectly … the shabby photographic studio in Costa Rica where Tirpak’s bulky packages of material would be reduced to microfilm, and then the trip into Mexico to leave the microfilm with DeGamez, for Tirpak was persona non grata in the United States, a myth that had to be perpetuated for his safety. Once the microfilm reached Mexico City it would be out of Tirpak’s hands and the rest would be up to Carstairs and his tourist—but Tirpak ought to have reached Costa Rica before now.

  Restlessly, Carstairs lit a cigarette. This was when he sweated, this was when his own war experience went against him because he knew what it was like to be on the run. He wondered where Tirpak was on this humid July morning, whether he was running scared or still had the situation well in hand. If he couldn’t reach Costa Rica would he try to push through to Mexico? Was he being followed? Had he been killed, and all that documentation scattered and lost? This had happened before too.

  The door opened and Carstairs immediately rearranged his features into their habitual mask. “Yes, Bishop,” he said.

  Bishop was smiling. “Tirpak has reached Costa Rica.”

  Carstairs’ reaction was fervent and brief. “Thank God,” he said, and then added savagely, “What took him so long?”

  “They’re decoding the message now,” Bishop said. “It’ll be here in exactly five minutes.”

  Five minutes later Carstairs was frowning over the message from Tirpak. It was the longest one that Tirpak had permitted himself, but Costa Rica was the safest place he had visited in eight months. In essence Tirpak said that it was Castro’s Red Chinese friends who were interested in him, and he had decided it was time for him to go into hiding. All the documents were being processed as planned, and would be forwarded to Mexico City, suitably camouflaged. Tirpak planned to throw them off the scent by remaining in Costa Rica for a week or two. Carstairs could absolutely (repeat, absolutely) count on the microfilms arriving in Mexico City between August 12 and August 18.

  When he had finished reading the decoded words a third time Carstairs put down the sheet and lit a cigarette. Tirpak had obviously been having a rough time or he wouldn’t be planning to stay in Costa Rica to “throw them off the scent.” In a word, things were getting very hot for him. He must have been closely watched and followed, so closely that for him to travel any further would jeopardize both the documents and any other agents he contacted.

  But Tirpak was a seasoned man, and not a giver of reckless promises. Carstairs had unalterable faith in Tirpak’s ingenuity, and if Tirpak said the microfilms would arrive in Mexico City between the twelfth and the eighteenth then the microfilms would be there. It was time for Carstairs to get his tourist moving.

  “Bishop,” he said, arranging the five photographs on his desk, “Bishop, you know the setup. Which one?”

  Bishop sat down and carefully scrutinized the five photos. “I’m afraid I lack your imagination, you know. They all look like authentic, true-blue American tourists to me.”

  Carstairs sighed. “Heaven knows that nobody should be judged by face alone, but this chap’s expression is too damn eager for me. Retired businessman, excellent background, but personality a bit—ingratiating, shall we say? Might get carried away in a foreign country and do some bragging—it’s amazing the loss of identity some people suffer in a strange country. This man might do except that he was in on some behind-the-line work in China during World War Two. If it’s the Red Chinese that have been hotly pursuing Tirpak we certainly can’t risk him.”

  “And the woman?” Bishop asked only from curiosity. Carstairs had an uncanny knack for assessing people; he was astonishingly perceptive and of course he was a perfectionist or he would never have gotten away with the outrageous operations he launched.

  “Too young. I want someone over forty-five for this, especially if they’re inexperienced. This tourist must be absolutely right.”

  Bishop stabbed the fourth picture with a finger. “How about this woman?”

  “Mmm.” Carstairs studied the face. “Humorless, but not bad. Compulsive type. She’ll do the job, won’t mix, probably won’t talk to a soul.” His glance dropped to the data beneath the photo. “Charlotte Webster, age fifty-eight—” He frowned. “She’s not precisely what I had in mind, but she’s passable. Bishop, I’d like to take a look at Miss Webster without committing myself. Is there some way in which I could see her without being seen, so to speak?”

  Bishop said promptly, “Yes, sir. I can ask Mason downstairs to set up an appointment to review her credentials. He can meet her in his first-floor interviewing room and you can stop in and look her over.”

  “Absolutely inspired, Bishop. Excellent. Contact Mason and ask him to take over. Tell him he’s to handle it completely and without involving me. Tell him I’d like to see her today if it’s possible. I’ve a hectic afternoon ahead but I’m free for a few minutes at two o’clock. See if he can set up an appointment with her for two this afternoon.”

  “Right, sir.”

  When Bishop had gone Carstairs took a last look at the photograph, frowned, sighed heavily and then resolutely put it aside.

  Carstairs went to lunch at forty minutes past one. The table-service rooms were filled and so he walked on to the ca
feteria and picked up a tray instead. He finished eating at two, and after consulting his watch he hurried toward the first-floor interviewing room. To the guard stationed outside he said briefly, “Mason’s appointment in there?”

  “Yes, sir. A woman.”

  “Good.”

  Carstairs opened the door. The woman was seated alone in the room, waiting, and she was at once so utterly and astonishingly right for the job that Carstairs could scarcely believe his eyes. He had always been extremely intuitive about his people: it was almost a psychic quality that enabled him to separate pretense from authenticity. His glance first noted the really absurd hat—it was difficult to overlook—with one fuchsia-colored rose completely askew; it then traveled over the wisps of white hair that refused to be confined, marked the cheerful mouth, and when it met a glance that was as interested and curious as his own he felt the triumph of a casting director who discovers the perfect actress for a pivotal role. He strode across the room with hand outstretched. “I’m Carstairs,” he said warmly. “I wanted to meet you while you’re here. We’re not really interested in your qualifications, you see, we want you for a job. Have you been talking with Mason?”

  “Mr. Mason?” For just a moment she appeared bewildered. “Oh yes, but he was called to the telephone, and—”

  “It doesn’t matter, I’ll take over now.” He sat down beside her on the couch. “I realize that you’re inexperienced but this is the very simplest of jobs. The important thing from the very beginning has been that I find someone absolutely right. I think you’ll do. I think you’ll do very well indeed.”

  “I will?” Her cheeks turned pink with pleasure.